Sense8 has been available on Netflix for more than a year. Since everyone is cord-cutting, I thought I would focus on streaming shows. Since House of Cards and Orange is the New Black have been around for years, I thought I would start with this. Let’s start with this, shall we?

Sense8 opens in a dark church, where we discover that Madison Bauer’s life has taken a turn. Long gone are the days of all she could eat fish and shrieking her name and busting out TV screens for kicks. She goes by Angelica now, and she has descended into the hell of drug addiction. Then, Sayid from Lost appears out of nowhere, presumably looking for Locke, Kate, Jack, or Sawyer. Then suddenly, she takes her tired dingy nightie on a world tour. Girl is looking rough, whilst appearing like a vision to a bunch of different people. A bespectacled silver fox appears on the other side of Annelle and he and Sayid really start jerking her around emotionally. You know when a woman gets emotional, she is going to want to eat something. This bitch reached for her piece, then she ate a bullet. Very good Annelle. Spoken like a true smar… later.

This mess is about a group of people who are telepathically linked, and how they cope with it pretty much. They come from all walks of life. The first member of the group we meet is Will Gorski, a hot as fuck cop from Chicago. Then, Riley Blue, a DJ in London whose hair is a fucking mess. Followed by Mexican movie star Lito Rodriguez, who sort of pick and chooses how much he’ll sound like Demian Bichir at any minute. But let me tell you, Lito’s body is TUH-GEH-THUH! So spicy. After Lito, we dip to South Korea to met Sun, a wannabe ballbuster who works for daddy yet is still a victim of that Asian patriarchal society. What can you do? I don’t know. Then we fly over to India and to meet Kala Dandekar, who we immediately find out is about to be married. But before we give two shits about that, we bounce over to Germany to behold Wolfgang, a crazy hot German piece that I know has a huge dick from a movie I saw him in called FreeFall. He plays a low-level thief in this. Whatever, as long as he gets naked (spolier alert, he does), that is all that matters. What doesn’t matter is this next character, in Nairobi, Capheus. He drives a bus based on Jean-Claude Van Damme, and all he wants to do is get HIV medication for his mom. Yawn. Next up, we go to San Francisco to meet Nomi Malone. Her last name isn’t Malone, but she is written just as bad so it might as well be. Nomi is a transgendered lady, with an annoying black girlfriend who has some of the worst lines in this shit show second only to Nomi Malone herself. We’ll get to that in a minute. Actually, I think that was everybody.

As everyone gets used to being in everyone’s head, they begin to pair off, and start using each other strength’s to their advantages. Sun is a bare knuckle street fighter, as is Wolfgang, which comes in handy when Capheus and Lito get in over their heads. Will and Riley start to get the feels for each other. As do Kala and Wolfie. Nomi Malone, when she is isn’t stripping and mispronouncing Versace, used to be a hacker when she was a man. When the powers that be that are trying to stop their little band of misfit toys from becoming Voltron, she decides she needs to do a little spying on them. So she reaches out to some hacker friends from her past. While doing that we find out that when she was a little boy, he was busted hacking into the Pentagon, but because he had rich parents and was a minor, all he got was community service. Um, no honey. That is not how that works. Oh, speaking of his parents, Nomi is hospitalized against her will pretty early on and it plays out in the most stereotypical way you can imagine. Nomi’s mom is there, in her Chanel-esque, probably St. John suits, looking all rich bitch, refusing to call her Nomi, only calling her Michael; the doctor is ignoring everything she says; the nurse saying over and over that “this is for your own good.” It is all so trite.

When Nomi’s hacker friend shows up, he hands her something that looks like an old cable splitter that had been painted white, and she looks at it and goes, “Wow, that’s NSA-grade.” Really, girl? Then they guy says something about having a boner for the equipment, and she goes, “I know what you mean.” Groan. This whole show, especially Nomi’s storyline, feels like a student art film that was written because someone had the new-found freedom to write such material. The transgender storyline is fine, but “I’m not crying because of what she said, I am crying because no one has ever defended me before.” Give me a fucking break. But I get, it is The Wachowski’s exploring their new lives, I get it. And since they created The Matrix, there has to be some sci-fi thrown in there as well. But let me ask you this, have you seen The Matrix in a minute? Guess what? It doesn’t hold up.

The Christmas Special/Season 2 Epsiode 1 is now available on Netflix, and the rest of Season 2 will be available in May. Will I watch the Christmas thing? Yes. Will I watch the rest of Season 2? I answer a cautious yes. I am curious to where they will take the show. I will say this though. If the Wachowskis want to keep my attention, make this an erotic thriller about the telepathic adventures of a Chicago cop, a Mexican movie star, and a German thug and call it Penetr8, and I’ll be on board.

Grade: C-